


i miss you like you were mine

by magisterequitum



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 16:04:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/pseuds/magisterequitum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>after she goes home from pemberley digital, lydia asks her why she's sad. she's not sure. (she is). </p><p>(deals with speculation of post pemberley arc and lydia's vegas arc)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i miss you like you were mine

The house is quieter now that she's back. She knows it's partially because of Lydia, everyone not knowing what to say. Her father stays in his study and her mother bustles around the kitchen, pulling recipes down and thumbing through them, pulling out things to make but never actually making them. Lydia stays in her room more often now, and if she hadn't known she was truly there, she'd think she wasn't.

Lizzie figures this out after spending four hours back home. She stands in the living room, holding her bags and wonders at how the house feels so strange. She chalks it up to her being gone so long, her actually being gone and doing a job, her feeling older.

It's a lie.

 

 

 

School's still on break, so she spends a lot of time around the house and in town.

Lizzie sets up the camera once. There's no script but she'd made a list on a Post-It with things like: 'rain at PD', 'Lydia scaring you', 'work actually great', 'evil copy machine'.

The red light blinks at her, waiting to be turned on.

She closes the lens, a bitter taste in her mouth, unable to even make the words form.

 

 

 

Lydia takes to lying in her bed a lot.

She doesn't say much, just curls up holding Kitty or a pillow and watches her as Lizzie reads from a book or makes notes about something or tries to write up her assignment due about her time in San Francisco.

One day they're both lying in the bed. Lydia's flat on the mattress, Lizzie a little bit propped up. The sun spills from the window above her bed, turning their hair gold-red where it blends together.

"Why are you sad?"

Lizzie's fingers still on the page of her worn copy of Anna Karenina. "What do you mean?"

Lydia turns her head so she's looking at her, her small fingers running over the fabric of the pillow she'd grabbed. "I mean, why are you so sad? You know you don't have to stay in the house all day. I don't need a babysitter."

Lydia doesn't. That's true and something Lizzie had learned after a few days back home when she'd ventured into Lydia's bedroom after a disastrous dinner where their mother had accidentally said something linking to Vegas. She'd crawled onto the floor to stretch out beside Lydia where she lay. The apologies had flown out from both sisters then.

"I'm not babysitting you," she says. "I just," she exhales through her nose, fingers curling over the book's spine. "Don't feel like going out."

She just doesn't.

 

 

 

 

"Did something happen while you were gone?"

Their mom's pulled out ingredients to make butterscotch cookies today. Usually it's one of their jobs to put them all away, when they're passing through the kitchen, but Lizzie decides to actually make them this time.

Lydia twists on the barstool, peering at her as she unwraps the butterscotch morsels. "I mean," her voice drops quietly, even though it's silent otherwise in the house, their parents absent. "Other than me?"

Lizzie remembers the phone call in the middle of the night, the rush to get to Vegas, to find her baby sister, seeing her on the bed white and so pale with the red of her hair limp on the pillow. She remembers the smell of the place, the horrible coffee Jane had pushed into her unresponsive hands. She remembers the terrified eyes that had looked around when Lydia had woken up.

"No." Lizzie bangs the measuring cup to level the flour out. "It wasn't you."

Lydia bites her lip, her eyebrows twisting in a way that conveys that she knows Lizzie's lying. It's the first time she's looked like the old Lydia in weeks.

"It wasn't you. I promise."

 

 

 

Here's what did happen:

So maybe she'd freaked out when she'd put one and one together and discovered why Pemberley Digital was so familiar sounding. And maybe she'd waffled back and forth on whether to go or not. And maybe she'd made a resolution that she was just going to do it and it was going to be great and if she ran into Darcy well that would be just fine because she was going to be an adult and she wasn't going to let this opportunity with Professor Gardiner go by. And maybe she'd built up a wall as a defense only to learn that Darcy wasn't so bad. And maybe she'd learned that he really was an okay guy because he liked his company and he knew all of his employees and his sister was charming and Fitz was great too. And maybe she'd learned that his lips were nice too and even better in the rain and the Japanese garden.

And maybe she'd liked it.

 

 

 

So maybe Lizzie realizes that she's actually missing Darcy. William Darcy, the guy she'd ridiculed for months on her video blog, the guy who'd said he loved her and then completely castigated her family, the guy who was rude and arrogant and awkward, the guy she'd learned really wasn't like that.

This is the worst damn slice of humble pie, she thinks.

 

 

 

She calls Jane while eating a blueberry muffin; it's a thing now for Lydia and Lizzie to bake whatever their mother has dragged out into the kitchen, to the point where their counters overflow now.

"We have too many baked goods," Lizzie says when Jane says her happy "hello" in greeting.

"What?"

"Oh," she swallows a bite. "Nothing."

Her sister makes a little noise and then says, "Is something wrong?"

"I kind of miss Darcy," Lizzie fails to keep her voice from dropping flat and sounding exasperated. Go her.

"What? Did something happen? When did this happen?"

She looks at the Post-It that's still stuck to the side of her laptop. "Remember when I said I ran into him in the garden?"

"Yeah..."

Clacking her teeth together, she confesses, "I might have made out with him."

"Lizzie!"

She winces. "And then left."

Her name repeated again, only more shocked this time.

This is why she hadn't told anyone.

Of course, Lydia bursts through her door at that moment, yelling, "You totes like Darcy, oh my god."

Should have closed her door completely.

 

 

 

"I'm a horrible person," Lizzie says five minutes later. She's on her bed now with Lydia squeezed in next to her, clutching her arm, listening as both she and Jane tell her she's not.

"You are not," Jane assures her on the other line.

"Okay, maybe a little."

"Lydia, not helping."

'What!? It's a bit sketch to just run out on the poor loser."

"I'm still in the room, guys," Lizzie interrupts.

"We know." They both say.

Lizzie rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. Maybe if she left the room, she could escape. Maybe she should have just called Charlotte. Maybe she should call Charlotte.

"Have you called him or talked to him at all?" Jane's voice interrupts her thoughts.

"No," she says, dragging out the vowel.

"You should totally talk to him." Lydia puts her head on her shoulder.

Lizzie frowns. 'Since when are you all Team Darcy?"

Lydia's eyes shift away. "He's not so bad, I guess."

"Fine," Lizzie shouts to the chorus of echoes from Jane and Lydia both saying she should.

 

 

 

 

She doesn't call him.

But she does send him an email. Her fingers hover over the keyboard before tapping away alarmingly fast and then hover again when she's finished. It's not long, just two paragraphs after the "Darcy" at the top.

"I'm sorry I just left. I might have panicked a bit. Or a lot. But I didn't not like it. I'm sorry if I made you feel that way."

She takes five minutes to hit send. She then slams her Mac's lid shut and leaves her room for the rest of the day.

 

 

 

"We should go to Carter's," Lydia says one afternoon when they're in the kitchen again.

Lizzie's hand hovers over the almonds. This is the first time Lydia's mentioned wanting to go out at all, anywhere, like shown interest in something that isn't the grocery store. It couldn't hurt. She's honestly just happy and excited that Lydia looks happy about doing something outside of the house. It's not even two in the afternoon yet either, it's not like they would do much. See, she's getting better at the judging.

"Or do you really want to sit here and make these almond bars?"

"Alright, let's go. But only for a little while." Before any of the night time people showed up. "We need quarters."

"Yay!" Lydia claps her hands and slides off her stool, heading towards the stairs. "I get to pick your outfit out."

Lizzie rolls her eyes but there's a smile on her face."

 

 

 

It becomes real apparent why Lydia was super invested in picking out Lizzie's clothes when they walk in to see Darcy sitting at a table away from the bar.

"You didn't," Lizzie says, frozen in the doorway.

Lydia beams up at her. "I totes did. Now give me the quarters, I'm going to play." She turns around in a flash of red hair, and then back again pointing a finger at her. "Oh, and don't be square or a dork."

Lizzie sighs as she watches her go, bouncing away towards the arcade games in the corner. She turns her head back to see that Darcy's noticed her. He's wearing a bow-tie and smiling slightly at her, the corners of his mouth tipped up as if he couldn't fight against it. It's infectious. He looks like how she left him, only his hair's neater. She remembers how it'd been plastered against his scalp and how it'd felt when she'd grabbed it and how he'd made an appreciative noise when she'd done so. Her cheeks heat up.

"Hi," she says when she gets to the table, pulling her lip between her teeth when he stands for her.

"Hello, Lizzie Bennet."

She's not so sad right now.


End file.
